During the course of attending and exhibiting at several industrial and hospital-related trade-shows with an adult evacuation chair, it was brought to our attention that there was a need for a similar apparatus for babies in a health care environment. In an emergency such as a fire, elevators can not be used. Today, modern hospitals are usually constructed with multiple floors. The challenge is to transport infants as quickly as possible from a dangerous environment to a safe environment. Most of the time, this process involves transporting the infants down stairs. Since the ratio of staff to babies is quite low, this does not permit for the safe evacuation of multiple babies by one staff member alone. It also raises the question of re-entering the building to evacuate additional babies. This poses additional problems for the babies who have already been evacuated as they can not be left unattended.
The existing products are old and outdated (FIG. 5 “EVACU-5” which is not patented and “WEE VAC” FIG. 6 which has a patent number (CA 1276053). These devices provide inadequate solutions to meet the existing market demand. The existing products could cause injury to the babies during their evacuation.
With the EVACU-5, a nurse wears an apron device with pockets at the front and rear. Not only are the infants at risk of being kicked or bounced around as the nurse walks quickly across the ward floor toward the stairs, but there will be considerable rocking as the nurse descends the stairwell. Additionally, the nurse's line of sight is limited to the infants in the front pockets. The nurse has no visual contact and therefore no way of ensuring that the infants in the pockets behind her are safe. Furthermore, the EVACU-5 requires the assistance of a second nurse to place the infants in the rear pockets—something that is not guaranteed during an emergency. The nurse then has limited options in terms of what to do with the infants once he/she reaches the safe area. If the nurse needs to be transported, she can neither sit, nor remove the apron without posing serious risk to the infants.
The WEEVAC device has several advantages over the EVACU-5, but there is still no guarantee that two nurses will be available to carry six infants on a stretcher out to safety. This method requires an increased patient to nurse ratio. This reduces the number of infants that can be evacuated safely during an emergency. Similar to the EVACU-5, there is still the problem of what the nurse is to do with the infants when they arrive at the safe area. The only options are to either place the stretcher on the cold wet concrete, or have two nurses stand around holding the stretcher off of the ground.
After researching the existing products available on the market and reviewing their safety and operational functionality, it was determined that we could design a more efficient product. By incorporating and improving on the existing design features from adult evacuation devices, we designed a new and improved product to be used in the safe and rapid evacuation of babies from multi story building.